Status and Support

[WarpGirl]

I don't believe I ever said, Archer said he was morally right. I also don't believe he ever said it was wrong either. He did rationalize his decision and I don't hold much with rationalizing what's wrong. My opinion, be honest about it, come out and say, "Yes this is wrong, but I'm going to do it anyway." I don't like hypocrits and to me Archer was extremely hypcritical in his behavior.

Maybe they have, I think my muse just used her cell and said, "meet me in Vegas."

Sorry I clicked quote instead of edit! Apologies.

[Silverbullet]

Okay, I was alive and ten years old when the Bombs were dropped. Ended the War. People were happy as hell. The Military commanders were happy. they knew that if the home islands were invaded it would be a blood bath of epic proportions. Millions of causalities. they didn't even want to contemplate it. Before the bomb the die hard militarists held sway in Japan. they were going to go down to the last man woman and child. No surrender and no quarter. The Japanese were not afraid to die. How do you fight that.

All the Americans worried about was if the bomb would work or not.

The prevailing attitude was the Japs asked for it they started this damned war.

Only the passage of time has allowed moralists to question using the bomb. Had they been alive then and seen the death lists from Iwo Jima and Okinawa the question of using the bomb wouldn't arise.

SB

SB

[Transwarp]

OMG Transwarp you still like me?

Fear not, WG, it takes a LOT more than an honest and well-reasoned review that might find fault with some of my work to get me to not like someone! I've said it before, and will repeat it here for emphasis: I usually learn more from the negative reviews than the positive.

As for Archer's stealing the warp coiI, I will refrain from debating whether his decision was or wasn't moral. You've already said you think it was immoral, and I can accept that. Just out of curiosity, though, what would you have done in Archer's place?

[Kotik]

LOL. And now for something completely different Have a look at the front page of ff.net - DO you notice something Someone's craving comments

[WarpGirl]

Well... To be completely honest (I know I'm blunt to the point of madness) I would have re-worked the entire thing. The whole episode suffered from the choppiness that was the hallmark of the entire series. Would I have kept a moral problem? Yes. I happen to like complicated as anyone who has seen my work can plainly see. I would even have Archer consider and come very close to making the same decision. The main problem I had was the complete lack of reasonable discourse between the two Captains. Surely there could have been some better use of diplomacy. Perhaps instead of demanding the warp coil they could have come up with a way to combine resources and labor to fabricate one. I have many ideas on how to handle it, I can't just pick one. But since you asked, I'll just say that for the concept of the show, (the formation of the Federation) I would have liked them to use the oppertunity to expound on that theme.

I apologize if none of that made sense. I'm feeling extremely ill at the moment, and I have no clue why!

[Alelou]

In my current fic, the Illyrians successfully defended their warp coil and Earth is destroyed. Later, feeling like crap because the Ilyrian captain tells him he'd clearly signaled his desperation for it, which had allowed them to prepare a defense, Archer wonders if he shouldn't have simply demanded it in exchange for fixing their life support.

But then hindsight is 20/20. And that approach, arguably, would suggest that Archer has become even more of a heel than he is by stealing it.

[WarpGirl]

Like I said, I know I'm alone.

[Alelou]

The thing is -- there's no scenario in which it makes sense for the Illyrian captain to willingly surrender his warp coil, except when he has to choose that over the more immediate death of his crew. That was the whole point of the dilemma the writers set up -- to force Archer into that kind of decision. Also, a diplomatic solution, while it would probably be preferable in the real world (or at least a real world in which there is no particular urgency to save Earth), would have made much duller television.

Not to mention diplomacy sometimes doesn't work worth sh*t, as the people of Syria are noticing all too clearly at the moment.

[Distracted]

LOL. And now for something completely different Have a look at the front page of ff.net - DO you notice something Someone's craving comments

Ummmm.... Yeah.
Well, a reader complained that I didn't have scene breaks in my stories. I didn't... because the software didn't recognize my little & signs and I'd been too lazy up to now to change them all to # and repost. So I spent the past two weekends doing that instead of writing. And now I have lots of hits and a few more comments and I can go back to my novel.

Sometime soon, I hope. If I have the time.

Work sucks.

[WarpGirl]

The thing is -- there's no scenario in which it makes sense for the Illyrian captain to willingly surrender his warp coil, except when he has to choose that over the more immediate death of his crew. That was the whole point of the dilemma the writers set up -- to force Archer into that kind of decision. Also, a diplomatic solution, while it would probably be preferable in the real world (or at least a real world in which there is no particular urgency to save Earth), would have made much duller television.

Not to mention diplomacy sometimes doesn't work worth sh*t, as the people of Syria are noticing all too clearly at the moment.

Politics aside, it seems we're at a standstill. The fact remains that Archer deliberately went after innocent people, and for the most part most military action tries to avoid that. They didn't even try. Oh well I don't mind being on the outside. How terrible would it be to just go along with everyone else.

[Rigil Kent]

The fact remains that Archer deliberately went after innocent people

The fact also remains that, if he hadn't taken the action that he did and the Illyrians refused to give them the warp coil as they clearly were going to, every single being on Earth would have died. So Archer is pretty much screwed either way. He either condemns a small crew of less than 100 to death by Expanse or he condemns an entire world.

Pretty sure I know which way I'd go.

They didn't even try.

What? They did try. The Illyrian said no. So they conducted an assault and seized it.

I'm not seeing what the argument is about here. Fate of the world (literally) on the shoulders of the ENT crew versus a recalcitrant alien captain who said no. Seems an easy choice to me.

[WarpGirl]

The problem is that they had the right to refuse! And they were attacked for it. They weren't enemies they weren't allied with the Xindi, they were just ordinary people stuck and had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Can you please tell your muses to give my muse back?

[panyasan]

Amends by Mareel is a nice, short story about Archer returning to the Ilyrians. It gives a nice insight in Archer's struggle with the situation and how he tries to mend it.

BTW Kotik, congrats! Well deserved!!

[Rigil Kent]

The problem is that they had the right to refuse! And they were attacked for it. They weren't enemies they weren't allied with the Xindi, they were just ordinary people stuck and had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

So what was Archer supposed to do? Shrug and let several billion people die because the Illyrian captain said no? That was the entire point of the episode - he had to make a decision that he loathed making because humanity was relying on the Enterprise to save them (since evidently Starfleet was too stupid to have an actual fleet or even put something resembling planetary defenses in place.) Yeah, it sucks for these ordinary folks, but no one ever said life was fair.

Again, I'm not sure what the issue is. This decision was intended to suck. *shrug*

[Kotik]

And now I have lots of hits and a few more comments and I can go back to my novel.

Sometime soon, I hope. If I have the time.

Work sucks.

You're surely getting a lot of hits, considering that you practically own the front page. Maybe you should have updated them in batches. By doing them all at once you bumped quite a lot of people off the front page. Not sure whether that will be universally appreciated